Goodgoat has had a day where God seems to be breaking through to speak to him…doesn’t happen very often but when it does Goodgoat feels very blessed.

As you may have seen, I am struggling with the story of Jacob wrestling the Angel (well, I think he’s wrestling Jesus, actually, i.e. a being that is both human and divine). 

Tonight at church the “words” that the prayer team had received included a reference to ‘when you walk through the waters I’ll be with you’…which goodgoat feels is where he’s at at the moment. Now, I went forward for prayer ministry and one of the prayers asked God to speak to me, at depth, to let me know what he thinks.

Well, I went for coffee and someone came up to me and said “so the Isaiah 43 was for you then?” – I said I didn’t know my Bible all that well, what is Isaiah 43? He pulled his little Bible out of his pocket and said “But now thus saith the LORD that created thee, O Jacob, and he that formed thee, O Israel, Fear not: for I have redeemed thee, I have called thee by thy name; thou art mine. When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee: when thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned; neither shall the flame kindle upon thee.”

Well, I knew it was God speaking to me from the moment he read out “Jacob” and “Israel” – just the concepts I am wrestling with – being fallen and yet struggling through that to get to where God wants me to be. We have a wonderful God!

If you have a prayer ministry team at your church and you’ve never been forward to be prayed for, can I recommend that you give it a try?

May God bless you.

Some time ago I heard a “Thought for the Day” on UK BBC Radio 4 that was given by the Bishop of Liverpool, James Jones. He wondered whether it was not possible to see the face of God and live because in the face of God is seen the pain of the fallenness of the World, and that that pain is so intense that if someone like Sadam Hussein were to see it, he would be destroyed by the encounter.

Let’s take this idea a stage further…in my mind any encounter between God and evil amounts in the destruction of the evil. What if when Jesus returns to earth for the last judgement, all of creation, including all people, are exposed to God’s ultimate goodness, and are therefore subject to being destroyed by the encounter between their fallenness and an absolutely good God?

On the Cross, we see Jesus taking our sin, all of our wrongdoings and fallenness on himself – the only one (being God Himself) that can take the confluence of the fallenness and Good? So…it’s only by a relationship with God through Jesus that the encounter between God’s goodness and our fallenness that we can survive the encounter? God is being totally generous in providing this route – He shows us forgivess through grace (sometimes explained as an acronym – God’s Riches at Christ’s Expense).

I find it very difficult to think about a God of Good that destroys anything that He has made – but the ideas given above help me to be able to accept this.

What do you think?